When Kipling met Twain

Blessed is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought face to face with a revered writer.

Rudyard Kipling interviewed Mark Twain in 1889. This surprising fact was revealed to me as I perused one of the books which emerged when I recently successfully ‘downsized’, moving across the road from a house to a townhouse. It was an opportunity to take stock of my motley collection of books, discarding a few (not as many as I should have), reminding myself to re-read some favourites and planning to read a few unread titles. Continue reading

Who is that on the $50 note?

Australian currency is a curious mixture, with the coins dominated by the monarch and varieties of fauna, apart from the $2 coin, which has QEII on one side and Gwoya Tjungurrayi, an Aboriginal tribal elder, on the other. The notes exhibit a motley collection of Australian notables, some more well known than others (by me, anyway: BanjoPaterson, Edith Cowan, Nellie Melba, John Monash). Less well known are Mary Reibey on the $20 note (a rags-to-riches story of a girl transported to Australia as a 13-year-old convict) and the Aboriginal man depicted on the $50 note, David Unaipon. Continue reading